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Keeping Your New Years Resolutions Program Recap

Home Keeping Your New Years Resolutions Program Recap

Thank you to Dr. Arvind Bhasker, board certified psychiatrist from Capital Health, for an enlightening presentation on how we can do better to set and keep our own resolutions.  According to the 2022 Forbes Healthy Survey, the most common resolutions were improving mental health, increasing physical fitness, losing weight, improved diet, and improved finances.  Nearly a third of adults felt pressured into making these goals, with Gen Z feeling the most pressure.  Encouragingly, 55% of respondents were able to maintain their goals for a year and only 11% gave up less than a month later.  So let’s take a look at how to set effective resolutions and how to keep them.

Goals Are Hard

Resolutions are goals in their simplest forms.  While we often associate them with starting the New Year, we can set real and meaningful goals for ourselves throughout the year.  While setting goals is in itself a source of motivation for us, it is often not enough to keep us on track.  In this same light, a goal needs an plan to make it effective.  Many goals fail because we don’t take the time to also develop an action plan for the goal; this serves to keep us on task and help when we are faced with obstacles to our goal.  Sometimes, we make too many goals; other times, our goals are too broad.  Whatever, the reason, the first step toward keeping our resolutions is to create effective goals.

Creating Effective Goals

Self Concordance

There are two elements that are crucial to creating effective goals; the first of which is self concordance.  Self concordance is the extent to which people pursue goals with feelings of intrinsic interest, meaning, that if the essence of the goal is personally important to us, we are more likely to keep pursuing that goal.  For example, if my goal is reach a certain weight, but in reality, its not that important to me, the more likely I will fail to meet and maintain that goal since it is not intrinsically of value to me.  Goals that are not self-endorsed are very likely to create high intrapersonal conflict.

Implementation Intention

The second part of creating effective goals is related to implementation intention, the Where, When, and How of making the goal.  This is where creating a plan comes in and can make a big difference in our ability to meet our goals.  Part of the planning process can include setting smaller, easily achievable goals to help boost our moral and keep us motivated.  Planning also allows us to identify potential obstacles and come up with ways to deal with them.  For example, if your goal is to eat healthier, but your schedule during the week is not conducive to cooking, meal prepping on the weekend can make it easier to stick to your diet.

Rethinking Our Resolutions

With keeping everything covered so far in mind, it may seem overwhelming to reshape how we approach goal-setting.  However, we can use the SMART method to help create effective goals that we can more easily attain and maintain.  SMART stands for:

  • Specific – what will be achieved and what will you do to get this done?
  • Measurable – how will you account for your progress?  This can be objective or subjective.
  • Achievable – is it possible?  Do you have the resources and skills?
  • Relevant – why is it important to you?  This is self concordance!
  • Timed – what is the time frame you are giving yourself?  This is not only to complete your goal, but intervals from which to assess your progress.

More Information

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Arvind Bhasker at ABhasker@capitalhealth.org.  You can view a recording of the webinar at https://youtu.be/Ekyx8UyFgDs.  You can also download a copy of the slides at https://www.njstatelib.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Presentation-Slides.pdf.

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